Knucksie after 40
He won 15 or more games five times and exceeded 200 innings seven times.
Safe to say those numbers will never be matched.
'I look in front of me, no ball. I look behind me, no ball. I look in my glove and see the ball. I say to myself, Rufino, you one lucky guy!'
To this day he doesn’t get the respect or acclaim that he deserves.
He was the consummate professional, always there to take his turn, giving everything he had on teams for the most part that didn’t contend. Younger Braves fans can’t imagine how there were times when one player was your only hope on a given day. At least they put him in the HOF, probably only because he played for the Yankees.
Wasn’t the time he missed the opener one year with appendicitis pretty much the only time he was on the DL in his career?
Give Niekro’s parents a lot of the credit. He was “raised right”. Modest, somewhat self-effacing, he waited a long time to stick on the big league roster and never took it for granted. Like Ernie Johnson, Phil Niekro makes his corner of the world a better place.
Clemens would have broken all those “after 40″ records if Congress hadn’t started poking its nose into baseball’s training habits. We can all thank Jose Canseco. If not for him, Tyler Pastornicky might have had 30 home-runs by the All-Star break.